Travel blog

Looking out over the water from the Bell grounds at Baddeck

#Alexander Graham Bell #Baddeck #Cape Breton

August 22, 20172 min read2017

Dateline August 22, 2017, Alexander Graham Bell

Our last stop in Nova Scotia was the Alexander Graham Bell site at Baddeck, where the great inventor summered. We knew him for the telephone; we did not know he was Scottish-born and a longtime Canadian, nor that he chased the Wright Brothers into the air with the Silver Dart, built a record-setting hydrofoil, and gave his deepest passion to teaching the deaf, work for which Helen Keller said he carried her from darkness to light. In the morning, the six-hour ferry to Newfoundland and the heart of our trip.

Janice firing a musket at the Fortress of Louisbourg

#Louisbourg #Fortress of Louisbourg #Cape Breton

August 21, 20176 min read2017

Dateline August 21, 2017, The Fortress of Louisbourg

Everyone said not to miss Louisbourg, and they were right. The great French fortress, once guarding the third-busiest port in the New World, has been brought back to life a quarter at a time, its streets full of costumed soldiers and storytellers. We pulled on wool uniforms, stood up as new recruits before a crowd, heard how a recruit chose each month between shoes and wine, and fired the muskets ourselves. Down the road stood the first lighthouse site in Canada. A day we won't forget.

#Amherst #Truro #The Lakes at Ben Eoin

August 20, 20173 min read2017

Dateline August 20, 2017, Golf in Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia gave us three rounds and a new friendship. At Amherst we drew Spud and Patty from Truro, Spud raised on PEI potatoes, thirty-one years a sailor, and we liked them enough to follow Spud to his home club. A roadside repair set us back eighty-five dollars and not much time, a lakeside campground tried to park us beside two Porta Potties and lost our business, and The Lakes at Ben Eoin turned out one of the prettiest, toughest courses we've played. On to Louisbourg.

A waterfall and barn at St Martin, New Brunswick

#Bay of Fundy #Fundy Coastal Drive #Saint Andrews

August 19, 20172 min read2017

Dateline August 19, 2017, New Brunswick and the Bay of Fundy

We crossed into Canada and picked up the Fundy Coastal Drive, the road that hugs the Bay of Fundy and its tides, the highest on earth. We started at pretty Saint Andrews, bought sausage and sourdough at a Legion hall market in Saint George, and wound up the coast through Saint John and Fundy National Park to postcard-pretty Alma, with a waterfall and an old barn at St Martin along the way. Next, Nova Scotia and some golf.

#Franconia Notch #The Flume #Mount Washington Hotel

August 12, 20176 min read2017

Dateline August 12, 2017, New Hampshire and Maine

From Connie and Lee's we wound through the White Mountains: golf with our friend Maurica, the Flume gorge at Franconia Notch, and the grand Mount Washington Hotel, where forty-four nations built the postwar financial order in 1944. We stayed with Janice's cousin Brian and his Donna in their light-filled forest home, then crossed into Maine for Castine, older than Plymouth, and a campsite supper of two-pound lobsters delivered for twenty-seven dollars. In the morning, the Canadian border.

#Derry #Hidden Lake #Pipe Dream

August 9, 20173 min read2017

Dateline August 9, 2017, Connie and Lee and the Car Show

We pulled into Derry to stay with Janice's sister Connie and her husband Lee, where Happy Hour keeps its own clock and Connie served flank steak with Stan's potatoes, her late father's recipe. Janice came a stroke shy of qualifying for the USGA Senior, we played Hidden Lake, and Connie and Lee took us to Pipe Dream, a brewery two former Marines built. Then the big day: a Make-A-Wish car show at the Budweiser plant, Lee's '66 Biscayne, the Clydesdales up close, and a brewery tour. On toward Newfoundland, with a promise to see them again at Sunapee.

The fourth hole at Cape Ann, looking toward Gloucester

#Cape Ann #Gloucester #Sagamore-Hampton

August 8, 20173 min read2017

Dateline August 8, 2017, A Little Golf

With the Cape behind us, we made an early Sunday run north of Boston for a few rounds of golf. Cape Ann in Essex gave us a Golf Digest hole looking out to Gloucester and two friendly local couples to play with. We camped on the ocean at Salisbury Beach and played the Sagamore-Hampton course in New Hampshire, good enough to come back for, and there met Dean and Melissa Rascoe, who bought us beers after Janice gave Melissa a tip or two. Then on toward Janice's sister's.

Uncle Bill and Aunt Margaret on Cape Cod

#Cape Cod #Aunt Margaret #Uncle Bill

August 7, 20173 min read2017

Dateline August 7, 2017, Aunt Margaret and Uncle Bill

Off the road north, we spent a couple of days on Cape Cod with Janice's Aunt Margaret and Uncle Bill, who turns ninety in October and hasn't slowed a step. Janice's cousin's wife Karen Otis was there too, and we got to talking about the family's deep roots: the Otises of the Revolution, Mercy Otis Warren and her brother James, whose statues stand in Barnstable. There were wild turkeys to debate, three-mile walks in the rain, and dinners out. Visits like this are the heart of why we travel.

#Black Mountain #Lonnie Poole #Winnapaug

July 28, 20175 min read2017

Dateline July 28, 2017, North Carolina and Rhode Island

North up the coast, we skipped the stops we'd shown you before and kept to the new ones and the good golf. We leveled the RV on a hillside near Asheville and played Black Mountain, sweated through a 99-degree round on Arnold Palmer's Lonnie Poole with our daughter Kieran in Raleigh, and got a four-year-old's dawn hug at our son James's in Wind Gap. Then Rhode Island: golf at Winnapaug, and Newport's Trinity Church, where Marty and Jeff were married, leaning six degrees until steel set it straight. A good day, and on to Janice's aunt and uncle.

#Jimmy Carter #Plains #Presidential Libraries

July 18, 20174 min read2017

Dateline July 18, 2017, Plains and the Jimmy Carter Library

From Georgia Veterans we made a day of Jimmy Carter's Plains, a whole town inside a single square mile: the depot that ran his campaign, a downtown mural of the landmarks, a memorabilia man with buttons dating back to Woodrow Wilson, and fried peanuts and peanut ice cream. Then on to his presidential library in Atlanta, the energy crisis and Janice's 21% mortgage, the Camp David Accords, and a humanitarian record after office that puts most presidencies to shame. We left, as we always do at these libraries, grateful to all who served.

A hole lined with flowers at Georgia Veterans State Park

#Georgia Veterans State Park #Blackshear Lake #Cordele

July 17, 20173 min read2017

Dateline July 17, 2017, Let the Summer Begin

Summer set us off again, north this time, aiming for Newfoundland and Janice's place in the Canadian Women's Golf Championship in August, with golf, family, and good country all the way up. First, the Saga of the Cabinet, the cherry cabinet we designed and built ourselves after our carpenter quit on us, with brother Brian's help to finish. Then our first stop, Georgia Veterans State Park on Blackshear Lake, a campsite on the water and a fine morning round. In the afternoon we waved at Plains, Jimmy Carter's hometown, with his library to come.

The old train bridge lit at night in Little Rock

#Clinton Library #Little Rock #Presidential Libraries

May 28, 20173 min read2017

Dateline May 28, 2017, The Clinton Presidential Library

The last stop of our Spring Fling was Little Rock and the Clinton Presidential Library. We found a city RV spot right on the Arkansas River for $12.56, with an old train bridge, lit up beautifully at night, that walked us straight across to the library in the morning. Reclaimed from an environmental ruin, it is one of the handsomest presidential libraries we have seen, and a fine experience whatever your politics. Then we said goodbye to Little Rock and turned for home, with a summer up north already on the horizon.

#Santa Fe #Palo Duro Canyon #Cathedral Basilica

May 24, 20173 min read2017

Dateline May 24, 2017, Santa Fe and Palo Duro Canyon

Heading east for home, we stopped in Santa Fe, the oldest state capital in the country, for a local lunch our friends Sandie and Skip had tipped us to, a walk by the old cathedral, and Native American singers in the square. Then it was on into the Texas panhandle and Palo Duro Canyon, the second-largest canyon in the United States, carved by a fork of the Red River. We gave it an afternoon and knew at once it deserved days. With the canyon behind us, we turned toward Little Rock.

#Meteor Crater #Petrified Forest #Painted Desert

May 23, 20174 min read2017

Dateline May 23, 2017, The Arizona Parks

Leaving Sedona, we were two Floridians astonished to meet May snow at Flagstaff. The day's drive home was a string of wonders: Meteor Crater, where NASA trained the astronauts who would walk on the moon, and the Petrified Forest, whose stone logs look sawn but split themselves clean. We stood among the 650 petroglyphs of Newspaper Rock and the impossible colors of the Painted Desert, and found an old Studebaker parked where Route 66 once ran through the park. A night in Holbrook, and Santa Fe ahead.

#Sedona #Marty Skelley #Jeff Skelley

May 20, 20173 min read2017

Dateline May 20, 2017, Sedona with Marty and Jeff

The far end of our Spring Fling was three days in Sedona with Janice's lifelong friend Marty and her husband Jeff. Four years had passed, but Janice and Marty, friends since their freshman year of high school, picked up like it was yesterday, over Marty's wonderful cooking. Jeff, a pilot and an artist, took us into the desert to fly his drone and showed us his beautiful bronzes, one of which now lives in our house. Then, too soon, it was time to point the Roadtrek home.

#West Texas #Hueco Tanks #Guadalupe Mountains

May 17, 20174 min read2017

Dateline May 17, 2017, West Texas and Hueco Tanks

The long road west across Texas took us past a Fredericksburg grown too touristy to keep us, through a windy night in Fort Stockton, and on to the Guadalupe Mountains, an ancient sea reef pushed up into the four highest peaks in the state. We watched the oil and gas country roll by, miles of new pipeline and drilling rigs, and reached Hueco Tanks near El Paso, a state park that is really a preserved historic site. There among its great granite hollows are pictographs left over ten thousand years, geometric designs and more than two hundred painted masks in the rock. We camped quietly at the foot of it and turned, at last, toward Sedona.

#The Alamo #San Antonio #Travis Letter

May 16, 20174 min read2017

Dateline May 16, 2017, The Alamo and San Antonio

An afternoon in San Antonio took us first to the Alamo, smaller in person than a boyhood of Davy Crockett movies had led John to expect, and to the stirring story of fewer than two hundred men who held it to the last against Santa Anna. We read Colonel Travis's famous letter, ending Victory or Death, and we have kept it here in full. Then we crossed to the River Walk for lunch at the rowdy Dick's Last Resort, and the next morning played the Quarry, a beautiful course laid into an old rock quarry. Then we pointed the Roadtrek west.

#Presidential Libraries #George W. Bush #George H.W. Bush

May 15, 20174 min read2017

Dateline May 15, 2017, The Presidential Libraries of Texas

The next leg of our Spring Fling was a two-day tour of the Texas presidential libraries. At the George W. Bush library in Dallas we walked through his Portraits of Courage paintings of wounded veterans and the sobering Nation Under Attack room, where Janice still keeps her old World Trade Center badge. We took in George H.W. Bush's library at Texas A&M, where John remembered meeting the man himself years before, and Lyndon Johnson's at the University of Texas, with his taped phone calls and a robot reciting his speeches. Whatever your politics, each one is a piece of history.

Royal Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans

#New Orleans #Royal Street #Carousel Bar

May 10, 20176 min read2017

Dateline May 10, 2017, Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana

After a winter of golf at our home course we set off in the Roadtrek on a month-long Spring Fling, aimed west at golf, presidential libraries, and a visit with Janice's lifelong friend Marty in Sedona. The first leg took us across the Gulf South: a two-day tournament in Panama City, golf and a winning night at the Beau Rivage in Biloxi, and John's first taste of New Orleans, the Carousel Bar and lovely Royal Street. We pressed on to a floating casino in Shreveport and the tales of a security guard who had seen it all. An honest tire shop in Bossier City sent us on toward Dallas.